The present invention relates to printing of forms such as tickets or the like; and more particularly the invention relates to printers having a print head, e.g. of the needle type, a platen, a sheet, web or strip transport meachnism a cutter for cutting individual forms, e.g. tickets from the sheet or strip and a receiving tray or the like. Moreover, the printer has a controller which controls the operation and cooperation of the aforementioned components.
Printers of the type to which the invention refers usually cooperate with more or less endless webs, sheets or strips onto which tickets or the like have been pre-printed as to information common to all tickets, and the particular printer supplements, the printed content by individual data, such as the date, a particular price, etc. The printed ticket is cut and ejected into the tray or the like.
Form printers usually operate also on the basis of a principle taken over from typewriters in which a sheet or bundle of sheets are pulled or pushed through the printing area, particularly on a step by step basis commensurate with line by line printing. In the case of endless sheets, i.e. of a roll of paper, a sheet or form is cut to have that form immediately available. It can readily be seen that the cutter must be disposed upstream from the portion printed on but cutting remains necessarily downstream from the remainder of the web. Thus, the feed device in this case must be disposed upstream from the printed paper as far as the web advance from the roll is concerned, i.e. upstream from the cutter.
Consequently, the web is pushed towards and into the printer rather than being pulled. One does, therefore, not pull the web (or a multi-layer web) through the printer. Pulling from the front is possible only after the cut, leading edge of the web has been moved out of the cutter. On the other hand, it is know from highspeed printers that in the case of line for line printing, and stop and go paper advance in between, pulling is better than pushing, particularly in the case of printing forms with one or more carbon copies.
Other type of ticket printers operate on the basis of precut tickets and particularly pre-printed tickets which are inserted (manually) into the printer, completed as to print content and ejected.